Falling Down 2004 Poem by stephen west

Part One.
Woke up seven thirty, thought I had a cold.
Pat said “No dear. You’re just getting old.
Any way, try Lemsip, for the lumps in your head”.
I’m at the kitchen table, feeling nearly dead.
Garden boy to our back door, his salary to demand.
But my legs crumble under me when I try to stand.
I crawl back to the bed and just as I lie down
The Lemsip pours into my lungs and I start to drown.
I’m heaving, eyes are popping out, I cannot take a breath.
So lucky that Patricia’s there and knows her Heinrich.
At the clinic Dr. Njie says that I’ve had a stroke.
He weighs me and measures me and talks about my luck.
“Your throat is spastic, Limbs have gone, one eye too.
But your brain’s intact, you’re thinking. So I say Good for you”.

Part Two.
Wheelchair bound – my tongue lolls out
My hands hang limp in front of me.
Four firemen life me on the plane
And plonk me in row three.

When I reach my home town
It really gets my goat
The intern gets it all wrong
Off to Ears Nose and Throat.

I’m fed mustard and custard
Through a tube bunged up my nose
It gives me indigestion
So in two days it goes

I crawl off to the toilet
The nurse says “Just call me,
I’ll bring you a nice bottle”
I said “I stand up to pee”.

I’m dying for a cigarette
So I take myself off
To the smoke room in a stolen chair.
(The first one makes me cough.)

The second one was wonderful.
So I walked back to my bed.
The nurse said “How’d you get back here? ”
“I used the lift” I said.

“And why do you exchange your food
With the geriatric man?
You cannot chew and swallow”.
“Oh but”, I said, “I can.”

The specialist - Ha – One minute
It must have been a slow day.
“I’m leaving” I announced to him.
“You can’t fly”. I heard him say.


Part Three.

I’m at the airport with a friend and a letter from Dr. Njie.
A letter that says, quite clearly, that I am fit to fly.
I‘m at the desk I’m booking in, and then the stick they see.
“Oh I’ve had a gammy leg since nineteen eighty three.”
I get back to the sunshine and lots of welcome calls
“It’s good to see you back again”. And I think, “No more falls”


Part Four.

Returned to work, my speech was slurred
And Pat said, “People think
When you lurch around the tables,
That you’ve had too much to drink
.
It took three months but I got back
Over seventy five per cent
Of what I really used to be.
But a lot of memory went.

But one thing does stay with me.
If it wasn’t for need of a smoke.
I might never have risen.
I’d be victim of a stroke.

So people’s histrionic coughs
And smoke free world demanding
Is water off this ducky’s back.
Because I am still standing.



Please, Please do not see this as an indictment against nurses and therapist. They are over worked, underpaid and understaffed and woefully inadequately trained, these days, in observation and care. They have to study Law instead. England has inherited a terrible Litigation Syndrome from the US. Everybody is so terrified of being sued for just doing their job that the job seldom gets done.
So when the going gets tough they try to stop the tough from getting going for fear of having to answer a lawsuit.
If you have stroke and kowtow to this terrible system, you will become a victim.
Stand up if you can.......